Done and Done

(I just finished all my COS paperwork and am officially a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer! I now have time to upload this blog post that I wrote a few days ago...)

I have a few days left before I officially COS (Close of Service) on March 24th, 2011. These past few days, I have been cleaning up my home and figuring out which friends at site will be receiving what from me. I am giving Jeanne D'Arc, my counterpart, first pick of whatever she wants from my house. She has been an incredible friend and colleague these past two years. Honestly, most of my successes at site is owed to her for helping me out so much. She took the time and had enough patience to work with me throughout my time here. Anyhow, a lot has happened since the beginning of this New Year...

In January, I worked on my graduate school applications. I should have started it earlier, but I wasn't sure if I was going to apply for admission to Fall 2011 or not. I ultimately decided to apply and to just see what happens. I did not take the GRE since I did not feel well prepared for it while being here, so I was pretty much limited to the programs I could apply to. By the end of January and after countless revisions of my personal statement, I ended up applying to 3 schools (2 in NYC and 1 in Massachusetts).

On February 11th, I finished my primary project with the Cooperative. Training officially ended on December 22nd, 2010 and we wanted to celebrate the cooperative members' achievements in learning how to make soap and igitenge. We were planning to have it in January, but my COS conference (A conference organized by Peace Corps for PCVs about to finish their service) was scheduled for the middle of January and I had to move the ceremony to February. Anyway, the ceremony was fun and excellent thanks to the work of Fidele (sitemate's counterpart) and the cooperative members. Fidele was the MC and knew which local officials needed to be a part of the ceremony and we invited them to come and make a speech. I was mostly in charge of creating the certificates, making sure the room for the party was organized and clean and obtaining refreshments for guests and members. The ceremony was about 3 hours and included speeches from Cooperative President, RRP+ representative, EPR Official, Hospital Official, Kamonyi District official in charge of Cooperatives and a Peace Corps Representative. After handing out certificates, members of the cooperative performed a little song and dance for everyone. They had a song they made just for their cooperative. It was great and I still hum it in my head from time to time. After this, the cooperative presented me with 3 gifts; the first was a heart shaped decoration with kinyarwanda words inside saying "You are our friend and God Bless You", the second was an igitenge they made and the 3rd was a box with something heavy in it. I didn't think to open it because I assumed it was a kilo of beans, but they told me to open it in front of everyone and sure enough, it wasn't beans, but a huge live rooster. It freaked me out and it flapped around for a bit. While everyone had a nice laugh about it, I had rooster poo on my pants. A colleague would tell me a few days later that she knew I was getting a rooster and this was the reason why she asked me if I knew how to kill them (I told her I had no idea how to kill it and didn't know what I would do with it). Afterward, I presented the cooperative with a photo album with many pictures I took throughout the training. People here LOVE looking at photos, so I figured they would love this gift. I had the pictures printed in America with a friend of mine when he went home for vacation in December (5X much cheaper than printing here). The entire ceremony was in Kinyarwanda and I must admit I was so surprised by how much Kinyarwanda I felt like I lost these past few months. I think the arrival of a sitemate contributed to this...in addition to my lack of effort towards the end of service. So in the end, 51 cooperative members received certificates for completing the 4-month training and acquiring skills to further their income generating activities. I honestly believe that their igitenge project will be a permanent IGA for the cooperative. I made a short video clip about my entire project and you can check it out here... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFHy5AUYPf0

After the party, I was on a high and felt great about finishing up my PC service. What a difference a month makes. Since then, I have hit my lowest low ever for various reasons - preparing to leave site, saying goodbye to friends, waiting for graduate schools' decision, but more than anything else, an unexpected loss in my family. I won't go into details about it because it still sucks thinking about it and completely unfair. I am fortunate to have a family that understood what this whole experience meant to me that they encouraged me to stay and finish my service instead of leaving a month early. If I left early and abruptly without a proper goodbye to everyone who was a part of my life these past 2 years, I would have definitely felt like I didn't end my service the right way. Two years away from home makes you appreciate so much and I am incredibly lucky to have an amazing group of friends and family to go back to.

With only a few days left as a PCV (and 2 weeks before I leave Rwanda), I still have friends to visit and share 'last' meals with in Kigali. My friends from work have told me that they are planning a farewell party for me on April 1st at my site. Hopefully its true, otherwise, I will be pissed they learned about April Fool's Day and got me. Before then, I will need to give away about 95% of what I owe to friends at work and my neighbors. Afterward, I am headed to Tanzania by bus with friends for a much needed vacation. I'll arrive in Dar, then ferry it out to Zanzibar for a few days before flying home out of Dar on April 16th. Once I get home, I will be looking for a part-time job or if something right comes along, then maybe a full-time job. However, I would like to travel and see family/friends first. I think I just need a 2-month break to be honest. PC provides RPCVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) with a modest re-adjustment payment, so I can live off of that during those 2 months. Maybe, maybe not. I heard that the freakin' MTA increased the prices of Metrocards since I left NYC. I will really need to control my spending when I get back.

Since I am terrible at updating this blog, this will most likely be my last blog update (I'll update it with photos when I get access to faster internet). I know it's cliche to end my blog about being a PCV in Rwanda like this, but whatever, it's my blog. A friend of mine sent me an e-mail a few days ago and asked me these 3 questions: (1)Do you feel like you've accomplished what you set out to do? (2)Has this helped you become a better man, person, American, leader? (3) WOULD YOU DO IT AGAIN IF YOU COULD? that's the most important question.

1) Honestly, I didn't know what I wanted to accomplish when I got here. Ok, well, I knew I wanted to help people, but I had no concrete idea how I was going to do this. Helping people can be done in so many different ways. I've helped hospital staff and secondary school students learn English, I've helped community members and students learn about HIV prevention and other illnesses, I've helped cooperative committee members learn financial and business skills, I've helped cooperative members obtain funding to begin a project where they learn new skills to generate income, I've helped a group of eight young men work together and learn life skills during Camp BE, I've helped the village kids learn the difference between Good Morning and Good Afternoon (well some of them learned the difference), etc...As a Peace Corps Volunteer, we are suppose to achieve 3 goals and I believe I did my best to achieve these goals within the two years at site.

2) I believe I have grown as a result of my experiences these two years. I believe I am more vocal about expressing myself and being open to other views/ideas. Also, I have definitely appreciated America so much more and everything about it. The culture, the diversity, the people, our freedom...I want to go back home and visit different parts of America, like Kentucky, Washington, California, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, etc...This is due to the amazing people I've become friends with here and listening to them talk about where they come from. I lived in New York City my entire life..aside from the occasional vacations to Florida to see relatives, I have not traveled around America.

3) If I could, I would do this again and again and again and...you get the idea. I loved everything about Peace Corps. Well, maybe not everything, but I loved everything about my village, the friends I made at site and in PC, the work and even the language. This does not mean that I enjoyed every minute of my time here, but overall, the positive memories beat out the negative ones. Heck, even the one where a fellow PCV and I were trapped in the Mental Health office by a 'foolish' for 2 hours on a weekend (when staff turns ghost in the hospital) and then finally being able to escape thanks to the local defense guard...but then encountering the same guy the next day and having him follow us home after work and saying gibberish..or that other time when he walked into our office one morning and smiled at Kim, but then looked at me like he seriously wanted to kill me...fun times, not...but, there were plenty of great times, like playing with the babies at Mer's orphanage or making 'American' food for friends at site and seeing them try out new meals and then making it themselves for lunch or speaking Kinyarwanda with women from the cooperative and hearing them call me Rwandan (The biggest compliment you can get as a PCV).

To sum it all up, I will miss Rwanda and loved being a Peace Corps Volunteer here. Just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who sent me letters, gifts, packages and well-wishes. I could not have done this without all the support from back home. See everyone at home soon enough!